Captain of a Rotten Planet
by Arturo Serrano
Summary: Whole new cast of Planeteers, much bigger dangers ahead. This is not the same old planet of the 90's.
1. The walls of ice

Chapter 1

The walls of ice

The train carrying Eric from The Hague back to Leiden was making its usual noises, plus one or two that he would have noticed, had he been paying attention.

His friend Nina had finished drawing the first issue of his robot dinosaur story, and the way she had captured his main villain's personality was fascinating him. Earlier that day, he had emailed her, "Never imagined General Tyrannus Rex wearing a horned helmet, but it totally suits him." And the wingspan of his PteroForce Units, albeit somewhat shorter than he had estimated for their maneuverability, looked so good on the page that he neglected to mention it. The colors were so right, the detail in the mechanical joints was so believable, the clanking when they moved sounded so real—

_Wait a second._ A hand-drawn comic was not supposed to come with sound effects. Sure, his previous Batgirl project had used _Slams!_ and _Pows!_ and _Thuds!_ generously, and his personal moment of artistic achievement had been to include a blatant _Frak!_ that only half its readers noticed, but you weren't supposed to actually _hear_ those things.

He got his head out of the page when the wagon began shaking with increasing violence. And before he could start wondering about what it all was, the entire train jumped and for a moment felt as if it were hanging in the air.

Then its own weight promptly smashed that delusion into deformed pieces.

* * *

Eric woke up with an unbearable pain in his left arm, not sure of how much time had passed. They had been crossing an area filled with farmlands, but rescuers shouldn't take long to come. He regained a bit more of his consciousness and noticed that his body was pressed between two opposite chairs. His arm was squeezed in a way human parts really shouldn't be. It was costing him strenous effort to merely breathe in, and his guts were protesting with a growing sense of nausea that he was doing his best to suppress. He feared he was about to burst into tears at the idea of not being able to avoid vomiting in such a confined space.

Suddenly the nausea vanished. He didn't know how, but what remained of his disorientation gave way to full alertness. To complete his puzzlement, his arm stopped hurting.

"This is what it must feel like to be Wolverine," he almost said out loud. Almost, because he saw a woman standing at the other end of the wagon and smiling at him.

"You can get up now. The chair below you is attached to the wall of the wagon, but the one above you is not."

He laboriously pushed the metallic mass off his back, and when he was finally able to stand, he took a moment to have a good look at that woman. She was wearing something resembling layers of loose veils with subtly inconstant hues of purple.

"I was hoping you wouldn't be too badly injured. I regret not coming sooner."

_This can't be a rescuer_, though Eric while dumbly staring at the barefoot, ethereal apparition in her semitransparent dress. And then he got it.

"You healed me?"

"Yes."

_Oh well, perhaps I'm not Wolverine after all. So how did she do it?_

Her face was of an undecipherable ethnicity. _Why is she wearing so little clothes?_ If, as he found himself beginning to fear, she was a spirit, a more urgent question had to be asked.

"Am I dead?"

"You are very much alive, though I can see how you may believe otherwise by looking at this wagon."

It was only at those words that he recalled a vague impression he'd had upon entering the train: He was the only passenger. But then he had opened the first page of the comic and forgot about it.

"Where is everybody?"

"There is one more person, over there." She pointed to the next wagon. "An old woman. She needs to talk with you."

As the still-not-disproved spirit exited through the sliding door, Eric moved to follow her, complaining, "What, is it anyone I kno—"

The next wagon was empty. _Where did the ghost go? And where's that old woman I'm supposed to meet here?_

He ran a hand over his face to try to clear his thoughts. _OK, let's see: we have already established that I'm not Wolverine, I've probably just had a hallucination about that multiracial Tinker Bell, I'm here alone, the sole survivor of a crashed train, well it's rather like a ghost train, I don't see anyone around, so it's a sort of ghost crashed train and I'm the sole survivor NO PLEASE DON'T LET ME BE BRUCE WILLIS IN UNBREAKABLE!_

He quieted his mind's voice just enough to notice that his cell phone was vibrating.

"Hello? Oh, Dad, it's great to hear you. Well, yes, I'm precisely there. It made the news already? Wai-wai-wai-wait a second. Listen, I'm fine. I'm fine. Really. For a while I feared my arm was broken, but—listen, listen—it turned out to be nothing. What? I haven't seen any, I guess they should be here at any moment. _What?_ No, no, Dad. That doesn't happen, it would have to be a really big one—_he said wh—_I'm telling you, it's just not possible. Well, that TV guy is wrong! _Big earthquakes don't happen in the Netherlands._"

Eric listened for another moment and breathed deeply.

"All right, I'll take a look."

Until then it hadn't occurred to him to remove the pieces of metal to have a clear view through the windows. He had to duck to bring his eyes in line with the position of the nearest unobstructed one, and what little seismologic knowledge he had about the Netherlands got quickly reorganized.

For as far as he could see, deep fissures ran through the ground for hundreds of meters, and the place where the train had crashed was at the bottom of what he could only describe as a crater. Either something had fallen on the train from above, or the ground below had given way. It actually looked like it had _broken_. Eric thought of the farmlands they've been passing through, and had a frightening image about what would happen to him, trapped as he was below ground level, if any of their irrigation systems had been ruptured…

A voice behind him brought him back to his senses. He turned around, but the wagon was still empty. Then he heard it again. It seemed to come from outside. It was a woman's voice, very loud. And he had to wait until it sounded for a third time for his mind to take notice of what it was saying.

"WATER!"

_No_, his mind yelled. The inundation couldn't be coming precisely now. Terrified, he moved a big piece of a poster that had detached from the wall and managed to get his head out of the window.

He was so dumbfounded by what he saw that all his thinking processes shut down and in the ensuing brain death he heard his father's shouts still coming from the phone.

"Dad? I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I got distracted. Tell Mom I'm fine. Yes, don't worry. I'm sure the rescuers will find a way to reach us."

He managed to calm his father and end the call quickly so he could have another look before it vanished too. _It's not possible._

A short woman with white hair tied in a bun was carefully walking over the cracks, with a cane in one hand and something which glowed very brightly on her other hand. It gave a deep blue light that he really wished he could appreciate more closely at a later time, because the rising wall of water that she had commanded to stop in front of her was doing a better of job of forcefully grabbing his attention.

The hand with the glow was making slow movements in the air, as if conducting an orchestra, and the water _obeyed_. After a short while, he realized what she was doing: the water was gradually freezing, part by part. She had already built other ice walls around the crater. When she finished, she turned to the train, and saw him. He gaped at the fragility with which her old body moved, when just a moment ago she had performed such tremendous magic. When she got nearer, he could see her face was Asian, heavily wrinkled, and radiating a gentleness that moved him inside.

"Are you alright, son? You look like you're going to faint."

"If you tell me your name is Katara, I'm going into a _coma_."

She smiled, and he felt a warmth that made his shock abate.

"Fortunately not. My name is Gi. And I was told to look for you."

* * *

When the helicopter ambulance finally arrived, the pilot explained that all rescue vehicles had trouble getting around because the _entire_ province had been affected by the mysterious cracks in the ground. It had probably something to do with too much excavating near undetected subterranean water.

During the trip to the hospital, Gi said to Eric, "I was fearing precisely that might be the reason. Too many oil companies have been licensed to drill around the Dutch coast in recent years, but the Dutch coast is a complex grid of lands below sea level bordered by miles of water. I guess it must have found some way of leaking beneath the polder walls."

"Sounds much more likely than a regular earthquake."

"I would not discard that explanation too quickly. Who knows what the drilling has done to the earth below."

"Do you think this is more serious than some leaked water?"

"I fear so."

After a moment of silence, Eric remembered something.

"You said you were looking for me."

"That is right."

He now had a strange suspicion, but he wasn't sure if this old lady had had the same hallucination that had haunted him. _Then again_, he thought, _I may as well try._

"Was it the crazy half-naked fairy who told you to go looking for me?"

Gi almost choked. "Please don't say those things about her. Her wisdom comes from countless eons. And if her intuitions are right, which they tend to be all the time, you will be seeing her often."

"Why? What does she want with me?"

"Haven't you wondered why you and I were the only two people in that train?"

"_SHE MADE IT CRASH FOR US?_"

"No! Quite the contrary, she was expecting to have us meet before anything like this happened. You see, I used to be something of… a warrior."

"I know. Back there in the crater, I saw you waterbend."

"What's that?"

"Never mind. So, she's like your boss or something?"

"I guess you could call it like that. We had a team…"

"…and she was your Zordon."

Gi breathed deeply. "I'm afraid I really need to catch up with this generation's language."

"Sorry. Please continue."

"I think she can tell you the full story when you meet again. For the time being, I need some rest."

"Of course. We should be arriving at the hospital in no time. I promise I won't ask any more questions until you feel better."

"Just one thing. I want you to have my power."


	2. Testing the waters

Chapter 2

Testing the waters

Eric's mother went into his room carrying a box of light bulbs. Very quietly she began unscrewing the bedside table lamp.

Eric lifted the half of the open book that covered his drooling face and said, "Wuttimezzit?"

"Nine in the morning. Sorry, my boy, I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Why are you changing the light bulb?"

"Oh, a magic fairy talked to me in my dreams and ordered me to be more eco-friendly. Or else."

"WHAT?" He sat up with a jolt, and immediately regretted it. _Note to self: do more crunches._

"You don't have to get so upset. I was only joking."

"Please don't be so casual when you joke about such matters."

"OK, noted. Here, your book fell."

"Thanks."

"Hadn't you read all Percy Jackson books already?"

Eric scrubbed his eyelids to try to finish waking up. "It's… the accident."

"Uh?"

"Yeah, I lost that particular piece of my memory, and I need to reread the entire series."

"Uh-huh. I can't believe they let you out of the hospital just like that."

"I guess I was lucky to be unharmed."

"Eric, the doctor showed me your X-ray. He said your left arm looked as if it had been broken and healed in the past. I know for a fact that you have never broken a bone, but the X-ray says otherwise. Can you think of an explanation?"

"No, not really."

"I heard your father say he thought he heard you say you thought your arm was broken."

Eric blinked five times. His mother went on, as if she'd made perfect sense, "Look, it's OK if you'd rather not tell us what really happened in that train. You're not injured, and that's all I care about. But at least let's not pretend that _something_ did not happen."

"So… we're OK?"

"Unless you care to reveal what organ you sold for that fancy ring, I suppose so."

"Oh, this." He looked at his right hand. "The lady I met in the train gave it to me."

"It's too pretty. It looks like it must have had some sentimental value."

_You. Have. No. Idea._ "Yes, it was nice of her."

"Don't you feel strange wearing a woman's jewellery? Not that there's anything wrong with it, if that's how you choose to express yourself, but—"

"NO."

"Aaaand I'm done. I take that's my exit cue. Get some sleep. Or read. Whichever you were not doing."

She finished checking the new light bulb and went out of the room. Eric picked up his dog-eared copy of _The Sea of Monsters_, but did not continue reading. He had so many things to think over. He had survived his test and won a magic item (a Ring of Waterbending, no less) and still wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. The ethereal woman with the Euro-Afro-Austro-Amero-Asian face had not appeared to him again, and Gi had left the hospital without so much as giving him a number. _Was that the whole point? Pass me the ring and hope I'd figure out the rest by myself?_

He made a fist and pointed the ring at the wall, concentrating hard. A minute later, he concluded, _It's official, I can't summon water._ He looked at the ring with disappointment. _It seems this doesn't work like Olympian hydrokinesis._

Then he remembered, _That woman mended my arm with no effort. She must be a hell of a bloodbender._ And a thought popped up. _Could I—_

_No. Bloodbending is evil. They wouldn't be giving out rings for free if that were allowed. But still… she did heal me somehow. How? What is her power?_

He did not hear his parents open the front door and greet someone; he was too concentrated coming up with test scenarios.

_Umi Ryuuzaki could create water, but that's definitely not my power. Nor is Montmorency's summoning of a water spirit. Frozone had to use the water available, which can be a huge drawback in some battle situations. Katara used her own sweat—perhaps any water will do? Let's see—_

After a few awkward seconds, the next thing he did see when he opened his eyes again was Nina standing by his bedroom door, just about to yell, "ERIC RUTGER VAN VLIET, WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU TRYING TO SWALLOW YOUR FIST?"

* * *

They were walking alongside one of the city canals. Nina had suggested looking for a less public place, fearing the noise would bother her still-not-revealed-to-not-need-any-recovery friend, but he had insisted.

"I lost the printed version among the wreckage, but I still keep the file you emailed me."

"How much were you able to read?"

"I reached the part where the lich overlord gives the heroes their first mission."

"Ah, the haunted house."

"Yup."

"It was hard to draw that one."

"Why? I gave you a full description, with blueprints."

"But you didn't consider that you'd be putting dinosaurs in it. You even had to write a scene with the entire cast of nine heroes and three sidekicks in the dining room."

Eric chuckled. "I couldn't resist the temptation. It was a joke I had been waiting to use."

"Do you have any more jokes like that in store?"

"No. At least not for now."

"Good. I don't know what to do with all the drafts I had to make."

"You can always use them for other projects."

"Sure, you never know when you're going to need a sketch of an armored _Parasaurolophus_."

Nina noticed Eric was moving his hand over the canal. She watched in silence as he curved his fingers in a claw-like shape and seemed to be trying to grasp something.

"Is that ring really hurting you that much, or are you holding an invisible glass of wine?"

Eric looked confused for a second, then replied, "It has to do with the ring, but it's nothing painful."

"What is it?"

"Well… what would it take for you to believe that this ring is magical?"

"A _Mythbusters_ two-part special, for starters. Seeing as you appear unable to produce a demonstration."

"You can bet I'm trying; I just can't remember how she did it."

"How who did what?"

Eric knew it would be little use, but he retold the whole train incident.

"I see. The good old activation power word, maybe?"

"No," muttered Eric, now visibly more concentrated. "All I heard her say was '_Water_,' like she was warn—oh."

Nina saw it too. "OK, I buy it, that thing _is_ magical."

A column had risen in the canal, only to collapse as soon as Eric finished his sentence.

"Is that what you saw her do?"

But Eric was no longer listening. "Is that it? Just that word? It's… it's a terrible way of setting up a voice-activated device! What if I casually drop the word in the middle of an ordinary conversation? I guess we must count ourselves lucky that this is not a magic Ring of Myocardial Infarction!"

"If all you have to do is say '_Water_,' I think it's straightforward enough to be virtually foolproof. You wouldn't want to have to remember '_Water prism power, make up!_' while under stress."

"I must admit I was starting to fear it would be something along those lines. But still, what if I'm gagged and can't say even that one word? Gi spoke in English, but it just worked when I said it in Dutch. Do you think the ring would also understand her in whatever her native language was?"

"Eric, has anybody ever told you you're an insanely pesky overthinker?"

"This is different. This is magic. You can never question the irrational too much."

"Are you seriously planning to test every possible implication of owning a ring that controls water? It has to stop somewhere."

"No, that's the point: it's the reason why every magic system in every fantasy setting has some pointless set of constraints attached to it; otherwise anyone could cleverly word his way into godhood."

"With a ring that controls water? Please."

"Never heard of Pun-Pun, have you?

"Read my unimpressed face."

"OK, what I'm trying to say is this: once you open the door to a system in which your will can shape reality, either your will, or reality, or the system itself, is the limit."

"This cannot end well, I'm telling you."

"I need to find out in how many levels I'll be allowed to pick _Silent Spell_."

* * *

"You are calling the Leiden University Medical Center. How may I help you?

"Good morning. My name is Myriam van Vliet-Sutan. I am searching for a doctor who works there."

"I'll be glad to help you. Is this the doctor who treats you regularly?"

"No, no. He treated my son earlier this week, Eric van Vliet. He was brought from the train accident."

"Oh, OK. I'll check the records for that day."

"I know the doctor's name. It was easy to remember. He's an American, Marcus Albert Livingston."

"An American doctor? That one should be easy to find… Well, perhaps you remembered it differently; I'm not finding any Marcus Albert Livingston."

"Try just Mark. Or Al. Or initials. Any of those crazy things Americans do with their names."

"Please stand by."

"OK."

"Thank you for holding. I tried every combination, even just the surname Livingston, but we don't seem to have any doctor with those names. I'm sorry."

"Could he have retired or something?"

"I don't think so. I checked historical records as well."

"Strange indeed. I'm positive that my son went to that hospital, but could you please confirm that? His name is Eric Rutger van Vliet."

"You mean, confirm that a patient came here? We would need some identity verification. Personal medical records are confidential. However, if your son is a minor and you have custody—"

"You know what? Don't bother. I may have misheard that name. Thank you."


	3. Incorrect coffee

Chapter 3

Incorrect coffee

The icy mass in front of Eric was not a frozen dessert. Seconds ago, it had been a cup of steaming café au lait.

_Make water ripple and whirl: check. Raise a column: check. Levitate drops of water: check. Make them dissolve in the air: check. Conjure mist from the air: check. Freeze water: check. Unfreeze water: check. Boil water—_

Eric drew a line across that item on his list. _If I can't boil water, then it's not temperature which lets me unfreeze it. Well, it's a good thing I like coffee ice creams too._

He picked up a spoon and annotated, _I can make droplets and turn them into tiny clouds, I can replicate the water whip move and then freeze it around anything, plus I'm smart and can always find new creative uses for my power, so…_

He scanned the list of names he had compiled and made several quick mental comparisons.

_So… what does that make me?_

His eyes settled on a name, and he circled it.

_I'm Sailor Frakkin' Mercury._

Yet he still wasn't sure why he had felt moved toward that one. He had to sit for several minutes and think hard until it finally hit him.

_No, don't tell me I'll have to fight alone for the first half dozen episodes while I wait for the other team members to be chosen!_

The doorbell rang. This time Eric heard it clearly from upstairs.

For the rest of his life he would remember that ringing.

His mother's voice rose in pitch, apparently surprised, but he didn't try to make out what she was saying. A minute later, though, she walked upstairs and opened his door.

"Eric, are you busy now?"

"Sort of. I'm doing homework."

She had a quick glance at his desk. "You're deconstructing that Aquaman comic? Come downstairs for a moment. There's somebody who wants to see you."

"OK. But you're doing irreparable damage to my education."

"The king of Atlantis can wait another eon. This cannot."

"Who?"

"Come and you'll see. I'll make more coffee. Look, you let yours get cold. My, it froze! I didn't know it could get so cold up here. Why didn't you heat it again?"

"I did try."

"No, I didn't hear you go into the kitchen. Come anyway. Your father's talent for small talk only goes so far. And bring that cup with you."

Eric did not immediately recognize the face he saw waiting for him in the living room. His mother must have noticed, for she hurried to add, "Surely you remember Doctor Livingston?"

"Hello, Eric. I hope your recovery is going well."

"It is, thank you." _There's something strange about this house call._ "Forgive me if I'm blunt, but what brings you here?"

"I was told that your mother was asking for me. Since I'm with the hospital under a different contract than their regular personnel, the phone operator didn't know how to find me."

"What kind of contract?"

"Let me show you." Doctor Livingston drew a business card from his pocket and handed it to Eric. It said, _Medicine Applied to Life_. "That's the company I work for. It's an American research venture working in partnership with European universities just like yours to analyze and neutralize dangerous toxic substances."

Eric's father commented, "I was telling the doctor that you're about to graduate from that same university."

"Yes, he told me everything about the terrific pharmaceutical chemist you're going to make."

_Why?_, thought Eric. _Why go through the trouble of coming in person, why show me a professional business card, why prepare an introduction speech?_

Then his mother interrupted his thoughts. "We'll leave you two alone so you can talk."

Eric and the doctor sat opposite each other. Eric spoke first. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Perhaps your memory may have been disturbed, but do you know that you were unconscious when you arrived at the hospital?"

_Of course I know._ Gi had given him the ring aboard the helicopter ambulance, and then he had put it on his finger, and then…

_And then…_

"I see that you're having trouble remembering. That's absolutely understandable, considering all you have gone through. You see, in cases of such severe trauma as you experienced recently, the mind has a way of blocking unpleasant memories. It may prevent us from actually knowing what happened, but it's all in good intention. The mind does that to help us focus on finding solutions and getting help."

_You're not helping. You're just talking, aiming to keep my attention so I follow your words instead of trusting my own mind, which by the way is trying desperately to remind me of something, but what is it?_

"Be that as it may, we ran some routine tests on you, just like we'd do with any patient being brought from such a tremendous accident, including some blood samples."

_What am I forgetting?_

"As you may know, some tests take longer to process than others. It was only today that some results of critical importance came out."

_What are you trying to distract me from?_

"We have reason to suspect that you may have been exposed to a very dangerous substance."

"A chemical?"

"Of inorganic nature, most probably. Highly corrosive. Perhaps, even… radioactive."

"Oh, that's terrible! When did medical tests run at advanced laboratories start turning so mediocrely imprecise?"

"You… must… understand that the techniques involved are extremely complex and only allow for some degrees of certainty. What is important is to ensure that you're not harmed, which appears to be the case, and more urgently, to prevent any further exposure."

"Got it. I'll make sure to not get anywhere near poisons, and if they smell delicious, I won't drink them. Thanks for the valuable and totally counter-intuitive advice."

"Now, just in case—have you noticed any unusual object in relation to the accident?"

_Now we're getting into your real business._ "Like what?"

"It could be any size, but it would be more likely to escape detection if it were small enough. For example, like that cup of coffee you're holding, or—who knows—that ring in your hand."

_Big mistake, doctor. No one is so casual unless it's deliberate._

_Yet I'm also making some big mistake._

"Should you encounter any such object, particularly one emitting high levels of energy, you are to stay away from it. For your own safety, do not touch it, do not approach it within less than an arm's length, and most importantly, do not attempt to disassemble it or in any way work out how it functions. You would otherwise incur great danger."

"Sounds easy. Will do."

"So, can I rest assured that, if you were to come into contact with any object that makes an unexplained sound, or that emits a special warmth, or that glows, you will keep off it?"

"Absolutely."

"Thank you very much. You must be aware that anything that dangerous could be the most innocent-looking thing around us."

"Nah, don't worry. Now that you've had the courtesy of warning me in person when any text message would do, I'll remember not to toy with anything that looks pretty and shiny."

"Very good. Now—ah, here comes the coffee."

"Eric dear, will you pass me the cup that you let freeze and take this one?"

Time stopped in the living room.

_The cup._

_That you._

_Let freeze._

Eric didn't think fast enough to prevent Doctor Livingston from looking at the cup he was _still_ holding in his hand, and didn't move fast enough to dodge the doctor's fist already burrowing into his jaw, and his other fist avidly closing around his ring finger.

"GIVE ME THAT RING, YOU MISERABLE AMATEUR LIAR!"

"Mom, run! Take Dad out of the house!" And, looking at the hot steam coming from the two cups she had laid on the coffee table, "_WATER!_"


	4. No time to explain

Chapter 4

No time to explain

Hot coffee jumped from the cups straight at the doctor's eyes, and his shrieks of pain made the entire house tremble. As soon as Eric was free, he pointed his ring at his attacker's face and froze the liquid in contact with his eyes.

Eric looked around. His parents were not in sight. He decided to head for the kitchen. There his father was already calling the police.

"Don't lose time, get out!"

"Is he still there?"

"Yes, but I knocked him down."

"We're not leaving without you."

"I can handle him. You go."

As if he needed more proof of the urgency of the situation, the kitchen door burst open. Doctor Livingston's eyes were bleeding, and somehow he had no ice left on his face. Eric was sure he shouldn't even have eyes anymore, but he was looking directly at the ring.

"I only planned to take your finger if it was necessary, but now I'll rip your guts!"

Eric's mother smashed the blender's vase on his head while her husband hurried toward the backdoor.

"Water!" Mist filled the kitchen, covering the family's retreat. Once they were outside, Eric turned to his parents.

"Get away from here. You cannot fight him. I can."

"Get real, son. You don't have the muscles for this."

"Dad, believe me. That man—"

The wall at the back of the house crumbled, leaving a man-sized hole. Wasting no time, the doctor started running toward them.

"OK, correction: That _mutant freak on steroids_ is too much for you. Water!"

The humid night air condensed in tiny ice crystals that Eric willed to gather in a single, sharply pointed block he let fall on the doctor's head. To Eric's horror, he broke through the ice with his fists, not even pausing in his steps. After gaining one more second of momentum, he jumped over everyone's heads, landed behind Eric's mother, and grabbed her by the neck.

At this point Eric didn't even think. He pointed the ring again, and aimed for his blood.

The doctor's body collapsed on the ground, shaking violently. His joints erupted, emitting sparks and long jets of water in all directions.

_He's a robot with hydraulic joints. Phew, I didn't turn a bloodbender after all._

"Now listen to me. I'm serious: You two run! I'll call for help."

* * *

Eric waited for his parents to disappear around the corner before he took his cell phone out. He could be well versed in books and comics, but he was no movie expert.

"Hello?"

"Nina, there's no time to explain. How do you kill the Terminator?"

Some part inside him rejoiced. He had always wanted to begin a phone conversation with those words.

"Pick a model."

"What?"

"Skynet sent three robot assassins to the past. That is, if you're only counting the movies. The TV series had—"

"Movies, just movies!"

"All right. Number one was your classic metal skeleton wrapped in a skinbag. Number two was my favorite, a shape-changing mass of liquid metal."

Eric looked at the tangle of limbs crawling toward him, and wondered whether his ring would control molten metals. He regretted not having thought of testing that beforehand. "What about number three?"

"Number three was basically number one wearing number two, plus boobs."

Eric looked again. "Definitely a number one. What do I do?"

"Share your name with at least two other people so it'll waste its time killing them, run and scream like mad, meet a sexy but ultimately useless bodyguard, conceive humankind's hero and last hope, and lure the Terminator into a factory with heavy machinery where it can easily be crushed by pretty much anything that moves, while miraculously managing to avoid getting crushed yourself."

"I think I missed my sexy bodyguard."

"Too bad. You should be thrice dead by now."

"I'll push my luck and search for a way to crush it. Thank you."

"My pleasure."

Eric hung up in time to jump backwards and evade the robot's grasp. After another failed attempt, it ceased to move. _What are you going to try now?_

"You think you have defeated me, don't you?"

Eric's heart nearly choked. He hadn't given any thought to the chance that the thing would still speak.

"I…" Eric was too scared to remember how to sound victorious. "I… I still can break more of your water pipes and short-circuit you."

"Fine. Do it. Some other will be sent to snatch the ring from your charred remains."

"What? What are you talking ab—oh frak, you're a walking bomb! Why is it always a bomb?"

"You won't find out which circuits to damage fast enough to prevent the detonation." It waited for the words to sink in before adding, "Goodbye, Eric."

"Water!" Eric's brain jumped and clanked from the violent shift in gears he imposed on it. _I need to achieve three things. The temperature of the reaction must be lowered enough to make explosion impossible or at least delay it. If the thing does explode, a half-sphere of thick and compact ice must be built around it and sustained with a hellish amount of willpower to contain the spread of shrapnel. And if that barrier gets bypassed, a wall of liquid water must be raised to serve as an elastic cushion against the expanding sonic pressure._ Shaping the water around the robot, building layer upon layer of liquid and solid half-spheres, exerting his whole mind into making them as strong as his survival instinct desperately mandated them to be, the thought did not quickly occur to him—_Now, if the thing is atomic—_

BOOM.

* * *

Slabs of ice several meters wide were hurled in all directions, and Eric's overworked brain did him the favor of not shutting down before remembering that his power was still active and he could melt the car-sized block speeding toward him.

For a dreadful instant he thought he'd never breathe air again. When the massive volume of water he'd just created fell to the floor, Eric was shivering in cold. His clothes were completely wet, and some ice needles still hung from his hair. The street was inundated in a twenty-meter radius, and the back of his house had several cracks made by the ice that had hit it.

But the explosion, as far as his inexperience allowed, had been contained. He did not know how many meters of equivalent undersea pressure he had replicated, but the neighborhood had been saved.

Only then did Eric give his knees permission to collapse to the ground. His brain was almost burned from the forced shift in gears, and while it decelerated more ideas kept popping up. W_ere these people behind the train crash? What do they want with the ring? They already can build realistic androids—surely they're powerful enough as they are? Or—Gi said she had fought in a team. Are they chasing after all the rings? How many rings are there, anyway? And how did these people know that I had one?_

He stood up, aghast at the realization.

_They've got Gi._

* * *

From his dampened pocket he drew a small piece of paper. He smiled. He had almost forgotten he still had it.

It read, _Medicine Applied to Life_, and an address in Amsterdam.

_That was your last mistake, doctor._

He stepped onto a large block of ice and levitated it.

_Fly on a magic carpet made of ice: check._

_Let's go._


	5. Blind-stab-suck—wait, what was it again?

Chapter 5

Blind-stab-suck—wait, what was it again?

Eric did not think of letting his parents know where he was headed. He did not mind the cold pain that enveloped his feet. He did not care that hundreds of people might see him flying along the route between Leiden and Amsterdam. He did not let any thought intrude in his determination.

He was on a rescue mission.

In retrospect, he felt, he should have seen this coming. How could he have believed Gi capable of walking away without training him? How could he have missed the clues? Obviously they had been after the ring since the beginning—and attacked when they knew she'd be alone.

Except she was not alone. She knew the time had come to recruit a fresh generation. But—and here his mind was unable to find a comforting answer—had he been chosen beforehand? or had she simply thought it expedient to hand the ring to whoever was present? In either case, she must have anticipated what would happen next: without her ring, she was defenseless. She must have known she'd be captured, searched, and being no longer in possession of the ring, severely interrogated. Eric shuddered. A frail old lady, with such a sweet smile…

_If the robots have done her any harm—_

He realized he didn't know what he'd be up against. The _Medicine Applied to Life_ building would have a security infrastructure at least as advanced as the assassin they'd sent to his house. Surely they'd all be equipped with rotor blades and hidden guns and a bomb to top it all… At that point he wished he had paid more attention to Nina's _RoboGeisha_ DVD.

But still…

"Hi, Nina."

"Hi. What's up?"

"Quick: how do you defeat an entire army of Terminators?"

"Oh, that one's easy. Shut down the main computer that controls them."

Nina's answer did not help him feel better. The main computer would have the best protection. It might not even be in the same building.

The streets rushed past him as he flew nearer the address in the doctor's card. He looked up when he noticed the tower ahead, at the spot where his limited knowledge of the city told him the laboratory had to be located. The _Medicine Applied to Life_ building was at least thirty floors high and two blocks wide, and it had a large sign with initials across its façade. _Are they waiting for me? In any case, they can't possibly be expecting the entrance I'm planning to make. I didn't spend all of yesterday's morning playing SubZero for nothing._

* * *

The row of windows just above the big M on the building's side were blasted to pieces by a swarm of ice projectiles. The security cameras caught identical scenes of chaos and scattered glass in each office, and the central AI wasted the first precious seconds in reviewing the footage to ascertaing through which window the invader had come in. To minimize the enemy's advantage, several robot assassins were deployed to take charge of each individual office. Simultaneous rounds of gunfire showered that entire floor, and then the respective teams began sending their reports wirelessly. After piecing them together, the central AI reached an irritating conclusion. The trespasser's corpse was nowhere in sight. He had not entered through that floor. Attacking those windows had been a distraction.

* * *

On top of the building, having just broken through a fire exit and disabled a dozen cameras with a massive wave of liquid water, Eric made two ice spikes and willed them to bury through the foreheads of the two identical robots that had just appeared in the stairs below. Satisfied with his lucky guess that their electronic brains would be in their heads, he made some more spikes and had the move with him as he ran downstairs.

He paused before the door that led to the next floor below. He mentally recapped his plan. _Blind-blast-roll-stuck-stabb-cross-rinse and repeat. OK, here I go._

_Poor, poor robots._

He put his ring hand near the crack under the door, and muttered, "Water," concentrating on the mass of air beyond the door, commanding it to condense in a thick mist to _blind_ whoever was in there. Next he pointed his ring at the ice spikes still hovering at his side, and made them follow his swift arm motion toward the door, which, like the windows outside, was _blasted_ to pieces. He immediately used the mist cover to _roll_ to the floor and to one side, to get out of any possible gunfire that would aim at the door, and from behind what felt like a desk he raised his hand and _sucked_ right above his head any liquid water present in the room. All this he did in a couple of seconds, and when he was satisfied that nobody was moving (because all hydraulic joints would be nonfunctional), he dissipated the mist and, with the water he'd gathered, he _stabbed_ each robot's forehead with ice.

_Too easy for the first room. Don't count on the others being like this._

He _crossed_ the room and approached the door that was at the other end of it.

_Rinse and repeat._

* * *

He had stormed through four offices and disabled around sixteen robots in this manner when he reached a room where, upon dissolving the mist, he saw no robots. There were three beds in a row, and the one in the middle was occupied by a man who appeared to be in his fifties, dressed in a hospital gown and connected to a heart monitor. Eric walked toward him carefully, his ring hand still raised in a fist. The man was half-awake, and did not acknowledge Eric's presence until he was at his side. There was a deep scar on his scalp, and the fingers of his left hand were twitching uncontrollably.

"You are not a doctor."

"No, I'm… actually, I'm not sure what I am. I came looking for a friend."

"This is no place to find a friend. If one of those doctors sees you, you'll get into trouble."

"I believe I already am. How did you get here?"

"I work at an oil drill. There was an accident, and next thing I know, I wake up here, guarded all day, too weak to move and with no explanation of what happened to me."

Eric stared at his scar and said, without attempting to conceal the solemnity of his meaning, "You need to be in a better place. You need real medical care. You have my word that you'll be out of here tonight." And he proceeded toward the next door.

* * *

The last three offices had been increasingly harder to fill with mist. In clear response to his intrusion, the air conditioning system had been removing humidity from the air. Eric thanked his luck that he was surrounded by sick people whom the robots wanted alive, or else they might have begun sending poison gas. _So why aren't they giving me sleeping gas or something? Could they really be that unprepared?_

_Or do they want me alive and conscious for some reason?_

He had barely stopped to consider the implications of such a line of reasoning as he crossed more and more patient wards. Every sick person he found had signs of having undergone some or other gruesome experiment. He was all for science and discovery, but looking at all the suffering he could not help wondering whether there couldn't be better ways to do it. Even if the knowledge might help him save millions of lives, the suffering of a couple dozen shouldn't carry any less weight. _I wouldn't accept a much-needed cure even if they told me they'd volunteered to be butchered._

_Even when it's done on animals, who can't say no, but certainly would if given a voice and a chance…_

_Is this what Gi was fighting in her days? Is this the enemy? But what is this "this," exactly? It can't be just science, or modern medicine, or advanced technology. Tools are morally neutral._

_Yet there's nothing neutral about manufacturing weapons. So the enemy is not a recognizable entity, not someone with an ugly face you can easily label a "villain," but rather a mindset. We're not fighting specific people, but specific behaviors and attitudes that result in harm._

_Try telling that to the master computer when you meet it._

* * *

After descending some more floors and occasionally sending robots full of liquid straight through the window and hundreds of meters upwards instants before they exploded, he had begun asking the patients themselves whether they had seen an old lady of Asian descent around the place. Thus far he had obtained no clear answers. They were either too injured to speak in the first place or too scared to trust this boy who emerged from the mist and asked strange questions.

_Gi, why couldn't you give me a Ring of Telepathy instead of this?_

When he threw down the next door and found, to his horror, that he had not been able to conjure the mist this time, he felt a simultaneous wave of shock and relief. After the first few instants in which he dreaded the appearance of another robot intent on blowing him up, he saw that this room was empty. Except for a bed by the opposite wall. And he was glad he had just thought that last part and not said it out loud.

He had found Gi.


	6. Passing on the knowledge

Chapter 6

Passing on the knowledge

Eric ran toward Gi's bed without pausing to look for traps or hidden robots. A dozen catheters were attached to her arms, and her eyes had trouble focusing on him, as if she were just waking up.

"Eric. You made it."

"I was starting to fear my princess would be in another castle."

"How chivalric of you to say so."

"What did they do to you?"

Gi smiled sadly and took a deep breath. "I won't lie to you. If you have come this far, you already know what they do to people in this laboratory."

"But what did they do to _you_?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why won't you tell me?"

"There is no point. I'm sorry that you came for me. My fate should be of no importance to your mission. But I guess nothing would have stopped you anyway."

"Of course not. Even less after witnessing what's going on here."

"Right, that's exactly you. That was one of the reasons why Gaia chose you."

Something warmed inside Eric. _I was chosen. I wasn't given this ring just because I happened to buy a train ticket at the wrong time._ But he didn't allow himself to dwell much on this new information; there were vital questions to ask. Beginning with that name.

"Who is Gaia?"

"The spirit who healed your arm. She is the one who made the rings."

_So there are more rings._ "And what is she, exactly?"

"It's difficult to express. She is the living embodiment of the planet's energy. She protects life. She cares for all."

"I see. A world spirit. It figures."

"What figures?"

"Her face. I couldn't guess where she was from. Since that time I saw her, I've been wondering why she looks like she was conceived at the United Nations opening party."

"You're not going to say those things next time you see her, are you?"

"Better question: why hasn't she come here to tear this building down? Why hasn't she come to rescue you?"

"But you have the power she created, and you came. Is it really that different?"

"Actually it is, yes. This it not to boast, but I came all the way here at great risk to my life. If she could jump into the deep hole in the ground where the train was, and then fix my arm _without even touching it_, I suppose magically teleporting you —and everybody else— out of here should be a breeze."

"She did teleport me once, when she gave me the ring. But priorities are different now."

"PRIORITIES? Can there be anything that the world spirit values more than a life in danger?"

"That is something I have already discussed with her, and for the moment we can only ask you to accept it."

"Excuse me, but if she's going to be my boss from now on, we need to be clear on her motives. I think I have at least that right, since she's expecting me to do her dirty work."

"Later. There are more pressing issues to attend to now."

"Agreed. Let's get you out of here."

"No, not that."

"What are you talking about? I'm going to remove all those needles and take you out the front door if I have to drag you."

"THAT IS NOT YOUR MISSION!"

Eric didn't know how to respond to that. _Of course coming here and rescuing you is my mission. What kind of hero would I be if I didn't use all my power to save a damsel in distress?_

_There's something I'm not seeing._

"OK. We'll do it your way. You're my sensei, after all. What is the big picture I'm missing?"

"This laboratory."

"It's a torture center. I'll shut it down. Got it. What else?"

"The one running it is an old enemy of mine."

"Good."

"Why?"

"Because you were planning to tell me everything I should know about him."

"Not him. It."

"Oh, it _is_ a supercomputer after all."

"A very clever one. It was designed by the most ruthless engineer."

"I see. Programmed for evil."

"The computer itself does not understand good or evil, but it will follow its instructions to the letter."

"What are those instructions?"

"I have only fragments. For the last few decades, it has been infiltrating biochemical research databases. Trucks loaded with samples have disappeared. And one of my teammates identified a virus that would make your laptop lend its unused processing capacity for some massive parallel computation. All we know is it involves protein modeling, but we haven't discovered its purpose."

"See? That's why I need to take you out of here. There's all this stuff you know about our enemy that I don't. I'm supposed to be in training under you, not trying to reason with you."

"Training? I can't even imagine how you evaded the robot killers. There's nothing I can teach you."

"Are you seriously asking me to leave you here?"

"I'm asking you to focus on the real enemy. You're wasting time talking to me, and in these precious minutes the central air conditioner has finished removing all humidity from the air."

"Wha—Water." Eric waved at the air in front of him, and only managed to condense a few droplets. "Just a moment ago I tried to fill this room with mist from the outside. I sent my command to all the water in here." Something next to the bed catched his eye. "Well… not all of it." There were several fluid bags connected to the catheters piercing Gi's arms. "I don't know what's in there, but I think we'll have to remove it all."

"Please, don't."

"Huh?"

"Eric, I had hoped I wouldn't have to say this much. It's more than anyone should have to deal with. But after all the experiments they did on me, those fluids are the only thing keeping me alive right now."

He looked at the bags in horror. His first impulse was to tear them in pieces. Then he reasoned better and found himself wanting to hit something very hard. His fists were closed in fury and he started to breathe fast and loudly.

"Eric, listen to me. You have to concentrate on what's important. You're wondering why your ring didn't have any effect on the liquid in those bags. Maybe that's one thing I can teach you. The ring can only control water that is pure or natural, not when it's contaminated. Actually, stay away from any kind of contamination. It will interfere with the ring's power."

"There _must_ be something I can do."

"Eric, focus. You are now in this room, an easily accessible one, where you have stayed long enough for the robots to prepare an ambush. I won't be able to help you, and you have no water at hand."

"Even in these circumstances, you can think strategically. I need a teacher like you."

She made a mighty effort to extend an arm and take Eric's hand in hers. This made him relax a little. He still wanted to make someone pay for what had happened to Gi, but her gesture had brought him back to being himself.

"You already know a lot about how to use the ring."

"Can I purify contaminated water?"

"No."

"Can I control blood?"

"No."

"Can I breathe underwater?"

"No."

"May I know who the real enemy is?"

"The usual. Selfishness. Greed. Anthropocentrism."

"So I have to kill the ghost of Ayn Rand."

"I've met some of her followers. Those nuts are the hardest to fight."

"What happened to that engineer?"

"The computer killed her."

"You know I'm going to keep fighting."

"Yes."

"And I won't stop until this doesn't have to happen to anyone anymore."

"That's right."

"Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Remember what you felt the first time you put on the ring."

"Yes, that… thank you."

"It will help."

"Before I go, is there anything you'd like to know?"

"How did you beat the robot killers?"

"They have hydraulic joints."

Gi smiled. "You'll do well, Eric."

"I'd say you've got no idea how much you changed my life, but I can see you have fully lived that life."

"It's a life worth living."

"I'll do my best to make you proud."

She let his hand go, and he pointed it at the wall.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm ripping this place apart. Water!"

* * *

He thought of that moment aboard the helicopter, when Gi had taken off the ring and put it on his palm.

"I don't think we will have another chance to do this. Better take it now."

"Is this what lets you control water?"

"Yes."

"Why are you giving it to me?"

"Because there's a war that needs to be fought, and it needs stronger warriors."

Eric looked at the ring and then at Gi, as if asking for permission.

"Go on. Let it show you."

He put the ring on.

Through the windows of the helicopter he noticed more clearly the clouds moving against the night sky. He saw them swirl and vanish and reform a million times, he saw the rain they had been and the rain they would become. He saw rivers flowing into the sea and being drawn up to the clouds. He saw the depths of the ocean and its mysteries, the currents circling around the world, carrying crowds and warmth in their path. He saw the primordial soup of life. He saw the inside of his own cells, made of nutrient fluids dissolved in salty water. He saw it flowing through his body, through the rivers, through the whole world. He saw his native Netherlands, a nation built on the knowledge and respect for water, and defined by its inevitable relation to it. He saw civilizations rising by the shore of mighty rivers, empires sustained by clean aqueducts and merchant ships, and the impending disaster of the entire human race because with the passing of each moment there were fewer and fewer pure water sources.

That was the moment when his mission was revealed to him.

* * *

At the bedside of his dying friend, he recalled that powerful vision and felt again connected to every drop in existence. After some moments of strenous concntration, some timid cracks formed on the wallpaper, and then entire bricks jumped out, pushed by the weight of a torrent he was summoning from the piping hidden in the wall. _I guessed right; y__ou can't run a decent laboratory without proper plumbing at every workspace room._ He forced the violent outgush to twist and reshape itself in a continuous stream no wider than a thread. _Concentrate a great amount of force into a small area, and you've got your own power drill._ Commanding the water's movements like a snake enchanter, Eric drew a line around the room door, which promptly fell down. Without waiting for the robots stationed outside to make a move, he directed the ultra-high-pressure stream across their foreheads, which the water severed effortlessly.

Then he noticed the robot that stood behind them. This one was different.

Instead of a head he had a flat screen over its shoulders, and on it a greenish bespectacled face was staring at him.

"Don't bother pointing that at me, boy. Your power is only one-fifth of what would take to harm this body."

Infuriated, Eric aimed the water at the last robot's limbs, but the flow ricocheted dangerously in all directions, cutting sections of the walls, floor and ceiling.

"Very clever of you. Now half the building will collapse, and it's already obvious that I'm going to survive it. In any case, this is not my real body. Also, my central brain is not in this building. And no, I'm not hydraulic."


	7. Face to face

Chapter 7

Face to face

The last robot made no attempt to approach Eric. Somehow it managed to get all the more frightening because of that.

_I need to get out of here before the building is destroyed. But I also promised to release the patients. I'm running out of time._

"Look around all you want, boy. Think of alternatives, combine possibilities. Do your thing. It shall be no use. You cannot outsmart me."

"That much is obvious. You withheld my friend from me until you made sure she was beyond help, and then withheld yourself from me until you made sure you were beyond harm."

"Switched to flattering, have we now? I thought you had the power of Water, not Heart."

Eric couldn't help blinking nervously at that. His ring fist, still raised and surrounded by the serpenting water stream, was trembling, and his back was covered in cold sweat. _The Terminator king is right—in these circumstances I'd try the Magical Ring of Myocardial Infarction if I had one._

"You must have very advanced processors. You don't happen to use water as a coolant, do you?"

"Too dirty for your ring."

"That's bad."

_Note to self: What the frak is that body made of?_

"Aren't you going to make your move? For your benefit I'll mention that this body is not permeable. What are you going to try?"

"You could have killed me since the moment I entered the building. Why am I still alive?"

"You were an interesting enemy to learn from. But you appear to have run out of tricks, seeing as I've put myself in a body that cannot be drilled, cut, smashed or broken. Now you are of a completely different use to me. Hand me the ring before I choose to take your finger with it."

"Water!" _If I can't get the stream into its body, I can still get around it._ The flow still gushing from the wall in Gi's room formed loops around the robot's joints and froze in place, forming ice casings that immobilized its shoulders, elbows, hips and knees.

Too late did he remember to immobilize its hands too. A second later Eric found himself gasping for his life, his neck forced against the wall by the robot's extendable, slowly closing grip.

"Didn't it occur to you that after years of fighting your predecessors I would have devised ways to counteract every one of your battle tactics? Now don't think of using the ice around my limbs to force me to move away, for they're holding your precious, sweating, trembling neck. It would be no fun to force me to break it before I intend to."

Eric's eyes widened in despair. _What was your maker thinking, giving you a concept of fun?_ He pointed his ring at his own neck and recalled what the robot had just said. _Sweating neck._ That gave him two vital pieces of information. _One: the robot has a sense of touch._ He didn't know what to make of it, but he couldn't rule out it being valuable some time later. _Two: there's water, pure, natural, salty water between its hand and me._ As the thin layer of sweat solidified, Eric suppressed a cry of pain as the skin of his neck burned until the expanding ice forced the robot's hand open. Once freed, he only needed to issue another mental comand for the entire body's robot to move a dozen meters backwards, pushed by the ice still surrounding it.

Eric collapsed on all fours, still squirming with the pain of the frostbite he'd given himself. Meanwhile, shaking with what could only be taken to be rage, the robot struggled to stand up until the ice rings vaporized around its joints. Eric looked up, reluctant to believe it. _Does it have a heating system installed? But no oven would be that fast. Unless—_

_It emits microwave radiation! That's how it remote-controls its body!_

Eric narrowly dodged the next approach of its extendable hands, and had to roll in the ground several more times before deciding to use the flowing water to help deflect the unceasing assault. The robot went on, "Bad idea, to let the piping inundate the floor. Now you can't properly walk anymore. Besides…"

The face on its head-screen appeared to smile for the instant it took Eric to realize what it meant.

"Water!"

He conjured an ice hoverboard below his feet and had it raise him up just before the entire floor became electrified.

"Oh, you learn fast. This is beginning to get exciting. Alas, all I need to do now is knock you off that makeshift platform, and this fight will be over."

"I just took a crash course in air-surfing while I was getting here. You won't find it easy."

"Let's see."

* * *

After losing his way among corridors and elevator shafts, Eric at last made his way to the first floor, protected from electrocution by his ice surfboard. The flatscreen robot promptly followed, still chasing him.

"What do you think you'll gain by coming down here? Any damage you cause to the structure will only kill you faster."

Its extendable hands were winding their way around the dozen ice boulders Eric had floating around himself, blocking their attempts to reach his throat.

"You'll eventually get tired, boy. Before your friend decided to give that ring to someone else, I had already planned all this. I can always afford one more mistake than you can."

True enough, Eric was too busy dodging blows to do anything else._ I need time to think. I could run away from the building, and I doubt that thing would want to risk being exposed in the streets, but I must not leave without finding a way to release the patients. I made a promise._

The boulders came together, their edges melting until they merged into a sphere around Eric.

"Too afraid to keep fighting? You're only making it easier for me!"

Inside the ice sphere, Eric found his cellphone was disconnected. _Is it the ice? Or is the robot interfering with it? Both the phone and the robot work with microwaves; it might be able to jam my phone line._

_What would Nina do?_

Before he could imagine an answer, the ice broke under a heavy blow from the robot's hands. One of them closed around Eric's neck again, the other swiftly reached for his ring hand. While he struggled to keep breathing, his senses vaguely registered that he no longer had any supporting ice under his feet.

"Let's finish this. I'll just crush your bones until I can pick up the ring from the minced meat. Then I'll leave you on the floor and let the electrified water do the rest."

The mechanical claw strained to turn his hand into pulp. Even instants away from choking, Eric managed to howl from the pain of having his fingers squeezed between the two plates. However, when the hand had gone through what felt to him like agony past enduring, he noticed he was still feeling it. _I shouldn't have any fingers left. Why do they still hurt?_

_The ring. It's uncrushable. But that thing's sense of touch must have already noticed. What is it waiting for?_

"I was promised this body was made of a decent material! This was supposed to be the toughest alloy ever made in the universe! Why won't the ring yield?"

_Frak. I'm officially finished. This was already bad enough without the toaster getting mad at itself._

_Am I going to give up now? In the old days, Gi must have faced dangers like this all the time._

_But I don't know what she would have done._

_I will never know._

Exhausted, Eric let his eyes drift upward. His gaze met the broken ceiling, where a tangle of electric wires still sparking hung from the hole the robot had jumped through.

_Is this going to be the end? Gaia will be disappointed. But I still feel she should have come for Gi. A crazy robot would be no match for Mother Nature. The way it broke through the ceiling… she could make its flatscreen face burst just like that. It would look like that hole, with all those wires hanging. It would be so easy. I only have this ring. I've done what my wits allowed, but there's a limit._

_I should never have tried this alone._

* * *

"ANSWER ME!"

"What?"

Now his enemy's hands were shaking him violently. Apparently, it had been yelling at him. He had been so close to fainting that he hadn't noticed he'd been asked a question.

"Answer me, or I'll follow your example and cook your eyes!"

_How is it planning to—oh, right. Microwaves._

Eric managed to take in enough air to mumble, "What do you want?"

"WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?"

"Whagg— Wh— What could you d— do with th— the ring anyway?"

"I don't just want your ring. I want all of them." The robot's voice was gradually turning darker. "I would ask her where the others are, but she's in no shape to answer questions."

"Oh, you would? I think you already have. You tortured her, and she gave you nothing."

"That's why you had better talk now."

"No, that's why had better not kill me." The face on the flatscreen twisted into an even angrier gesture. "Come to think of it, you're not actually planning to do it. This is not to deny your murderous potential, but you're suddenly much less fearsome now that I know there's something you want from me that you cannot get from my corpse."

"Give me a few days, and I may perfect my brain dissection techniques."

"Too bad for you. Do you know what's a perfect insulating material for blocking microwave signals?"

"You don't say."

"Water!"

_This time I have to do it fast. It's basically the same phenomenon that ocurrs when you lose a cellphone call because it's raining. Except I've no idea what frequency the remote controller is using, so I'll have to employ different densities of mist around this thing. I'll just sandwich each layer of mist between layers of ice to prevent it from moving anymore. Now what is that noise coming from the street?_

A legion of police cars and helicopters were now surrounding the _Medicine Applied to Life_ building.

_I suppose that was to be expected. You can't throw an exploding robot out the window without the neighbors complaining._

When the first team of cops entered through the laboratory's front door, they found a strange human-sized figure encased in ice, and had to dodge a huge ice sphere that rolled its way out until it crashed against some bushes outside the building. Once he was out of their sight, Eric melt the sphere and watched the cops do their job from his hiding place.

Then his cellphone rang.

"Dad? Is it you? It's not a good mo—"

"Do you think you have won, boy?"

"WHAT? You can't be transmitting from inside that thing."

"I told you, that is not my real body. Besides, you didn't insulate the sole of my feet. I installed relay nodes across every floor."

Eric remembered the copious amount of wires he had seen hanging from the ruptured ceiling.

"Even so, you have been defeated. The laboratory will be closed down, and your research will stop."

"You can bring the building down for all I care. My research has taken longer than you have lived. It won't hurt me to wait until I can use another laboratory."

"Whatever you're attempting is too big to keep hidden for long. I wasn't even looking for you; your whole operation blew its cover on its own."

"A mistake I am ready to learn from. Thank you, Eric. We will both be less clumsy the next time we meet."

The call dropped as the cops began carefully ascending the stairways and rescuing the patients. Still hidden between the bushes, Eric spoke into his ring.

"All right, Mother of Rainbows, Lead Singer of Save the Whales and Empress of Recyclonia, I don't even know for sure this is the way it's supposed to work, _but if you're listening, I DEMAND YOUR PRESENCE RIGHT NOW!_"

Behind him a voice had begun, "You don't need to yell, you know—" but the sentence was cut short by Eric turning around, walking resolutely toward Gaia and slapping her face with his good hand.


	8. The true neutral alignment

Chapter 8

The true neutral alignment

* * *

_**The trolley thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario designed to test your ethical priorities. In one of its most basic versions, it assumes that a trolley car is out of control, headed toward five workers on the rails. The trolley is going too fast and the workers are too near, so they can't run away in time. However, you are next to a switch that would redirect the trolley toward another rail route, where there is only one worker. The question is: is it right for you to move the switch and kill one person to save five?**_

_**The dilemma gets more complicated, and the ethical questions involved get deeper and harder, by inserting numberless variations. You can have a scenario where the trolley is full of people and you must choose between letting it kill the five workers on the rails or diverting it toward a dead-end route where it will crash and kill all the passengers. Your answer to this one will likely vary depending on which was the route the trolley was originally headed for, and whether you're in the trolley or not. In another scenario, there is only one route, and your only chance to save the five workers is by pushing a very fat man in front of the train to stop it. The fat man may be innocent. Or he may be the one who set the five workers to die in the first place. Your choice will be different depending on how responsible you believe yourself to be for the secondary consequences of your actions, how much relative value you place on individual human lives, and how much of a difference you think there is between simply letting something happen and actively causing it.**_

_****__**Different ethical frameworks have given opposed solutions to each version of the dilemma.**_ There are no right or wrong answers. The purpose of this exercise is not to judge whether you're a good or bad person, but to help you realize what your true priorities are.

* * *

Gaia was still staring at Eric, who was having a hard time controlling his agitated breathing. She spoke first.

"You cannot do me any real injury. But your anger is acknowledged."

"Of course I can't harm you. You're not a woman. You're not a real human being. You're so out of my reach that, for this unique time in my life, I won't regret having hit a lady."

"Well, you have expressed your anger very effectively. Now will you explain it?"

"Are you going to tell me you still don't get what's wrong here? One of your agents has died in agony while following your orders, and you, the all-powerful Mother Nature, protector of life and whatnot, didn't move a finger to save her."

"You did your best."

"YOU DID NOT! You could have caused a blackout in the building, electrocuted all the robots, made their wires rust and exhausted their power supply. You could have brought every pigeon in Europe and had them stand in formation on this street so that it would read '_Help please_' from the sky. You could have sent a dream vision to every cop in the city and arranged the clouds in a gigantic arrow pointing here." Eric paused to regain his breath, never ceasing to give her a hateful glare. "Instead, you did nothing. You let me risk my neck trying to figure out how to save someone you've known longer than I have, someone toward whom you had a greater responsibility than I had, only to discover it was already too late. From what she said, she saw you as her friend. She trusted you until the end. I don't know what she was expecting you to do, but I certainly expected more, so much more than your scandalous inaction. If there's any big picture somewhere that I'm still missing, I'd very much like you to begin explaining."

"You're hurt."

"Don't tell me how I feel."

"Do you want help with your wounds?"

"After you let them do everything they wanted to do to her? Don't you dare touch me."

"What do you want to hear from me?"

Eric thought for a moment. "An apology won't do. It wouldn't be sincere."

"What?"

"I won't believe you didn't want this to happen. Not when you have ultimate control over everything, not when all you had to do was whisper and the world would obey you. I won't believe this got out of your hands, because there's _nothing_ than can possibly get out of _your_ hands. So I don't want an apology. I do want an explanation, though, and then I'll decide whether I want to continue working for you, considering all the occupational hazards. Whatever you have to say, don't insult my intelligence by pretending to be sorry."

"There is indeed an explanation."

"I'm listening."

"Eric, do you know why I take this human form to talk to you?"

"Is it relevant?"

"If I were in any other shape, you wouldn't care what I had to say. You say you're listening, but if I didn't look human to you, you wouldn't _want_ to listen. You humans only pay attention to what concerns yourselves, and I've found that my message is accepted more willingly when you think it comes from someone who is like you." Eric said nothing. He wasn't sure there was any possible answer to that. It bothered him more that he couldn't see where it was leading. "With you, however, things are different. For you to understand what I have to say, I'm going to have to show you how much I'm _not_ like you."

"It wouldn't change the fact that Gi died because you just didn't care."

"Tell me anything you want, Eric, but don't tell me I don't care. Just today, a submarine volcano emerged near the coast of Greenland, killing thousands of fish and disrupting the currents for many more. But no human would take notice of that. Today, a wonderful mutation produced a new species of the violet tip butterfly in Sudan, and it was eaten by the first spider that found it. Today, two coyote pups climbed the wrong side of a hill in the Mexican desert, and fell to their deaths. Today, a truck in Indonesia inadvertently crushed the last male member of a frog species only I knew existed. Today, millions of humans brushed their teeth and happily killed billions of bacteria that may have been dangerous to them, but were still, in a way, precious to me. Don't think that I don't care, Eric. I care about many more things than you can demand of me."

"You won't get away from this one by claiming to be too busy. You've just conceded my point."

"You still don't see it, do you?"

"Have you heard about the trolley thought experiment?"

"What is that?"

"Read it from my mind. I'm too upset to give a lecture."

Gaia touched his thoughts for the briefest moment. "I see. You hold me accountable."

"With infinite power comes infinite responsibility. Let me pose this scenario to you: there's a train carrying a driver and two passengers from The Hague to Leiden, and someone causes serious damage to the ground so that the train will derail. No one in the train knows what's going to happen, and they're powerless to avoid it anyway. But you are in the unique position of being able to fix the ground, or make the train pass over the twisted rails without incident, or simply teleport everyone to a safe place. You see, the trolley thought experiment gains dramatically higher stakes when the test subject happens to possess unlimited superpowers. So my question is: How is it ethically permissible for you to choose to do nothing, and only show up after the damage has been done?"

"Would it change anything if you heard my principles in full detail?"

"I want your _justification_! You just admitted your responsibility in this matter; now I want to know how you can live with yourself knowing what you could have done, but chose not to!"

"You're no longer listening."

"You're not explaining!"

"Not to _your_ satisfaction, which you evidently think is the only one that matters."

Eric froze. He seemed to argue with himself, and even when he seemed to have reached a conclusion he hesitated before continuing, "You are worse than I thought. You really think I'm angry just because my personal interests were harmed."

"The fact that I had to take the human form to even have a conversation with you proves that with humans it's always about personal interests."

"You manage to insult me more and more with each thing you say."

"You didn't know who Gi was until a week ago. You had no way of caring whether she lived or died until you met her, and even then you wouldn't have engaged in a daring mission to rescue her if she hadn't changed your life so deeply. But I just mentioned several examples of no less important tragedies that only I mourn. Excuse me if this will come off sounding colder than it actually is, but the items on the top of your small list of priorities are in crowded company when they're transplanted into my own list."

Then it hit him._ I said it myself. She's not human. I can't fault her for not thinking like a human would. I can't expect the world spirit to empathize with my personal tragedies. But she cares, of course she does. __It's just that she doesn't care on the same level that I do._

"You had to make an effort to see me for what I really was before you were able to slap my face. Do that again. Don't see me as a member of your species, but as the Spirit of the Earth, and try to tell me again that your personal predilections about life have any claim on mine."

"But she was your friend. You personally chose her for whatever her mission was. She must have been special to you, even as a lowly human."

"No one is lowly to me. But I must ensure that the whole stays pure. It is just you, with your individual consciousness, who insists on seeing death and loss where I create growth and renewal."

Eric didn't need to ask where the renewal was in his case. He only had to look at his own hand, where the power of Water was still available to do good. A new warrior had been chosen. As long as the cycle continued, nature didn't care for the missing pieces.

Then he was able to look at her in complete openness, beyond her human disguise, beyond her assumed personality, and see her in her true shape, as an eternal force of nature, a universal law that did not grant privileges. She had undoubtedly taken notice of those coyote pups as they slipped on the ground and fell from that hill, even if she didn't throw a rope to save them. She would still remember them. Their bodies would feed the vultures and the worms, who were as much her children as he and Gi were. The realization of her true meaning struck him with an unbearable feeling of shame. He was no longer able to look at her, and now desired nothing more than being able to reverse time and take back that slap. The memory of having let his rage turn into actual violence made him feel dirty inside.

"Gaia, I'm sorry." He didn't even try to hold his tears.

"You don't have to be. Most humans slap my face every day. You are one of the few who realize what it entails."

"Please, do something. Slap me back. Break my arm. Don't be so understanding, don't look at me like that!"

"You won't find vengefulness in me."

Eric nodded. Again he had judged her by his standards. But vengefulness was a purely human weakness.

"Tell me, what do I do now?"

"Look out of the bushes."

The street was paralyzed. Literally. The cops that had surrounded the building where static, some even suspended in the air when they wer just about to jump the entrance steps.

"What did you do?"

"This conversation is happening in subjective time inside your head. By the way you were yelling, I thought it would be safer."

"How much time has passed?"

"Barely an instant since you melted that sphere. I must say, that was quite a clever escape. However, I'd suggest you come out and have someone treat your wounds. You could even say you were one of the patients they held here."

_That hurts even more. I refused her healing powers, and after the way I treated her she's still respecting my wishes._

"How will I be able to talk to you again?"

"For the time being, I don't see any emergency that would require my help. You're going to need some time to rest and get your life back in order."

When Gaia vanished, and time resumed its flow, Eric felt only partially relieved by that answer. She had either missed what his doubts really meant, or politely declined to address the subject.

"There's someone here, between the bushes! What is your name, son?"


	9. Breathe

Chapter 9

Breathe

"Does it hurt when I touch you here?"

"Reliably."

"How did you get those scratches on your hands?"

"I don't know. They kept us sedated all the time."

"Do you mean you've been held there since the day of the train wreck?"

"That's as far as I remember."

"What happened to your neck?"

"What? What happened to my neck?"

"There are portions of skin that look frostbitten."

"Ouch." _You heard the doctor. No more sweatbending for you, mate._

"There are small second-degree burns on your face, as if it had been splashed with something hot."

"More ouch." _That'll be the coffee, doc._

"And your airways appear irritated. Have you been in a heavily dusty location recently?"

"I haven't moved from here in weeks." _Apart from breathing the rubble from my own house and the lab, that is._

"I'm going to put a lot of bandages. Lay down here."

"OK." _That's what I get for remembering my pride at the worst moment and refusing the help of my fairy godmother._

* * *

"Besides the robotic personnel and your fellow captives, did you see or hear anybody else in the building during the days you were held?"

"No one." _If you don't count this level's boss, of course. And 'robotic personnel' is a terrible word choice._

"Can you think of any reason why the laboratory would mark you as a target?"

"No idea." _Does being heir to the power of Water count?_

"Did you know that, one full hour before the explosions in the laboratory started, one similar-looking robot attempted and failed to murder your parents?"

"What? How are they?" _I mean, other than following my request to keep my superpowers secret? Also, I need to learn to fly faster._

"They are not harmed, but we'll keep watch over their temporary location while the house is repaired."

"Thank Jeebus."

"Where do you intend to stay in the meantime?"

"I was planning to go to the U.S. anyway."

"Say again?"

"That's what I was doing at The Hague in the first place. Arranging my travel papers. I'm attending a scientific conference."

"What's the conference about?"

"Statistics."

"Is that your field of study?"

"No, but I'm doing it for the trip and the extra credits." _Professor Pluschak would dismember me if she heard that._

"Would you let us know if you remember anything else about this matter?"

"Sure." _I'll just conveniently neglect to mention that the U.S. territory I'll be visiting is not the mainland but Puerto Rico._

* * *

"Any comments for the _Leidisch Dagblad_?"

_Keep walking, just keep walking._

"An unidentified Thai citizen was found dead at the hospital, apparently the same woman who was with you at the accident. Do you wish to comment on that fact?"

_No, it's not a good idea to make him choke on his own saliva. Just keep walking._

* * *

"Do you now have anything to explain about that Gi woman, what happened on the train, and that ring, young man?"

"To be honest, mom, to be absolutely, purely, sincerely transparent to you, I've not done a very good job of explaining this whole matter to myself, much less of trying to say it to someone else."

"But there must be some things you do know."

"True. I discovered that Gi used to belong to a group of activists or something, who happened to have these magical powers."

"A group? How many rings are out there?"

"I never asked her."

"At this point you surely realize the danger she's put you into, even though you don't need to assure me that you're more than capable of stopping a murderous robot on your own. But ask yourself this: Is this something you really want to do? This is clearly much bigger than one illegal laboratory. Do you actually feel like bringing all this into your life?"

"I don't know. I didn't even know that was a choice I would have to make. But whatever this is about, it's important. Something worth doing. Something to do proudly."

"I'm not saying it isn't. But why does it have to be you? Why couldn't she have given the ring to someone different?"

"It doesn't matter who got the ring; their mother would be worrying about these same issues right now. Let's put it this way: the person who made the rings is a mother too. In a way. And she's worried about her children, just like you are. And her way of caring for her children is choosing some random people to do this stuff, because it's important."

"What you're saying is that someone has to do it, but you're not convincing me that _you_ have to."

"No, that wasn't what I was trying to say. I was trying to say that in a better world we_ all_ would be doing it."

* * *

"Hi, Eric."

"Hi, Nina."

"When are you going to send me your next issue?"

"I haven't exactly had time to write these days. Besides, I plan to get awfully busy at the conference."

"Which in your case always means talking to strangers and taking photos. How long will you be away?"

"It's scheduled for four days, but I could use some fresh air. Go where mad robots won't be chasing me."

"Your Math teacher will chase you if she sees you wasting your time."

"She'll have her own things to do. All she expects from me is an essay that I can compose from just reading the slideshow titles."

"Will she accept that?"

"I don't know. She's from Belarus. I've no idea how they do things over there."

"Belarus! That's interesting. She's going to defrost in Puerto Rico."

"I'll steal that one."

"You're welcome. How do you know there won't be any more Terminators after you?"

"I don't. But I can still call you for advice, right?"

"Right, but you should really be looking for the rest of your team instead."

"If they're out there, I bet they're looking for me already."


	10. The art of conversation

Chapter 10

The art of conversation

The young man who greeted them in English seemed a kind person at first look.

"Good morning. You two are from the University of Leiden, right? Welcome to Puerto Rico. My name is Rodrigo Mistral, and I'll be your guide around the various events scheduled."

"Thanks. I'm Eric van Vliet. And the lady who's talking to the cab driver is my teacher."

She walked up the steps to the hotel entrance in time to introduce herself. "Good morning. Thank you for waiting for us."

"My pleasure. I'm Rodrigo Mistral."

"Linka Pluschak."

Only then did Rodrigo pause to look at her. She had to be in her mid-sixties, but was still a beautiful woman. He didn't think before speaking, and would regret it for the rest of the day. "Are you married?"

Linka struggled not to make her gasp audible. Eric stared at him as if wanting to spontaneously develop heat vision. She promptly composed herself and replied, "That's a very inappropriate thing to say to a stranger, especially with that look on your face, boy. But I'm willing to file it under 'culture shock' and move on. Where can my student and I have breakfast?"

"I'll show you the way."

* * *

At the hotel restaurant, things didn't go better for the poor guy.

"Are you really from the Netherlands?"

"Well, Professor Pluschak here is Ukrainian…"

"When I was born it was still the Soviet Union."

"… but I'm Dutch."

"Really?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You don't look Dutch."

"How so?"

"Your face. It doesn't appear very European. And you're not as tall as I was told Dutch people were…"

"Oh, that. My mother is half-Indonesian."

"… and your blond hair is obviously fake."

Linka half-laughed, half choked on her cocoa. Eric handed her a napkin and continued, "Do they train you guys with a focus on the art of foot-in-mouth conversation?"

"No, it's just me. I say what I see."

"Well, yes, I dye my hair, thanks for noticing."

"I thought the point was that nobody would notice."

"I'm not an expert, OK? Please tell me you're not supposed to join us at every meal."

"I'm your appointed guide. I must."

Eric's eyes first rolled, then scanned the table. _Something natural, something natural__…__ there it is._ He grabbed another napkin and wiped his mouth, while muttering, "Water." One glass of pineapple juice fell on Rodrigo's lap. He jumped from his chair in a rapid fire of apologies.

"I don't know how that happened. Excuse me while I go to change clothes."

A very pleased Eric looked forward to a quiet breakfast until Linka took his ring hand and said, "I think I'm keeping this until you learn to behave."

And she took the Water ring into her purse, where it joined two others Eric did not see.

* * *

"First, that guy is the one who needs to behave. Second, _how did you know?_"

"Not here. Not with this many people around."

"You've been my teacher for two years. Why didn't you ever utter as much as a casual mention of what was going to happen to me?"

"I didn't know until last month. That's all I can safely say for now."

Eric's face paled with the sudden thought, "You were in Gaia's team! You must have another ring! That is, if you haven't already found somebody to give it to—"

"ERIC, NOT HERE!" She hit the table harder than she had intended, and for a second the entire restaurant fell silent.

They finished their breakfast and went to the elevator. Before going to their rooms, Eric asked, "When can I have my ring back?"

"Right now I need to rest, but don't worry. I know you're definitely going to need it; that's the first thing I learned in my own missions."

She closed the door to her room, and Eric didn't have time to find a hiding place before Rodrigo emerged from another corridor.

"There you are. I supposed you would be heading for your rooms by now. Hey, somebody stole that pretty ring you had."

"You don't say."

"Yes, you had it in that hand. You didn't notice? Do you want me to report the theft for you?"

"Don't bother," said Eric, making an effort not to add, "me."

* * *

Eric didn't find it in himself to refuse Rodrigo's offer to show him around the hotel.

"Doesn't it bug you that your ring got stolen?"

"Actually, yes. This is exactly like that time when Wonder Woman went to Babylon 5 and the PsiCorps took her lasso."

"When did that happen?"

"You can't have watched it. It's a fanfic I wrote."

"In case you haven't been told, you are weird."

"If we're going to make observations again, let me say for the record that you don't look too Puerto Rican to me."

"You think there's even a way Puerto Ricans are supposed to look like? Look around. There's no single standard. I could introduce you to my Mulatto father and my Latina mother. Here you have the ultimate melting pot, the place where English America, Spanish America, Native America and Africa are blended together in glorious varieties. That's partly the reason why conferences like this are being held here. If you want to gather the best of humanity, you can no longer expect every member to represent just one ethnicity."

"I see your point. I myself am three-eighths Jew on my father's side."

"I haven't met many Jews here."

"They have been important in Dutch history."

"Who?"

"Lots. Literally. I could start with Spinoza and end with Anne Frank and still be missing half the list."

"I see. Why is your mother half-Indonesian?"

"My grandmother married a Dutch ship captain. A romantic story, maybe for another day."

"What was he doing there?"

"The Netherlands were the colonial rulers of Indonesia, and used the resources of the islands for trade. Now we learn in school not to be proud of that part."

"It sounds like what the Spanish did here."

"Same thing, basically. Find a place where people can't oppose your firearms, and exploit anything valuable as if you owned the place."

"What happened to Indonesia?"

"While we were busy with the Nazis, the Japanese took over the East Indies. It wasn't nice either."

"The Japanese seem to be good people."

"And they are, but before they stopped to think of what they were doing they got themselves into a war that quickly got much bigger than they could handle."

"Not to mention Hiroshima."

"That gets a lot of credit, but they were actually considering surrender by then. The Americans just wanted to make a statement as to who was the boss. When it comes to showing off, they can't stop themselves."

"Sort of the reason why they took this island from the Spanish. Kill the old bully, become the new one. Now they don't know what to do with us."

"Shouldn't you guys decide what to do with yourselves?"

"Some Puerto Ricans like the way things are. For starters, we get American citizenship for free."

"Like that's so special."

"Not special. Just useful. With a U.S. passport, we don't have to worry about visas. If instead this were just another Latin American country, it'd be much harder for us to travel anywhere. We couldn't even go to your island Sint Maarten, and it's next door from here."

"Right, right, there's Sint Maarten. And a couple more out there. Sometimes it's too easy to forget that the Netherlands is still a colonial kingdom."

"How does it feel to know your country holds power over other nations against their will?"

"How does it feel to be glad your nation's not independent because that way you can get out faster?"

"How does it feel to restrict the influx of people who only want a place to live in peace and better themselves?"

"How does it feel to have voting rights and _still_ not have those benefits in your own country?"

"Touché."

"It's only fair that I say the same."

"I'm sure your teacher could speak for hours on how the Soviets behaved when they were in charge."

"My father's mother could tell you a lot about the Nazis."

"She's the Jewish one, right?"

"You can imagine what her youth was like."

"I have cousins in Argentina who lived through the dictatorship, and a great-aunt in El Salvador who survived the civil war."

"You should meet my friend Nina. Her parents were executed for having managed to get her out of East Berlin."

"My father knows some guys who joined the Black Power movement and were jailed for refusing to kill Vietnamese."

"My father's father marched in '68."

"I help run the Puerto Rican branch of Greenpeace."

"You _what?_"

"It's still a small office, and we are awfully short on donations, but we've begun to make ourselves heard."

"How did you get into eco-activism?"

"I'm a student of weather science. I'm getting my degree this semester. That's why I joined the crew in the statistics conference; I want to listen to everything. Some mathematical methods are crucial for analyzing the impact of global warming. I'm especially interested in hearing your teacher's presentation on computer models of wind patterns."

"Well, I hope you enjoy it. I can't guarantee I'll be able to follow much of it. My focus is chemistry."

"So why did you come?"

"At first I viewed it as just a good chance to see the world and earn course credits for it. But recently a good friend died, and I felt I needed a few days away from my normal life to put my thoughts in order."

"Sorry to hear that. But you chose a good place if you wanted some peace."

"Not quite. Today I found out that my teacher was friends with my friend, and never told me."

"Why would she do that?"

"Let's say they had their reasons to keep their secrets. Bad thing is, I'm getting to a point where I'll need to be let in on many of those secrets or get killed trying to figure them out."

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't mind my words. Sometimes I get too entangled in a metaphor."

"For a moment I thought my English was failing me."

"Actually, I'll tell you something: ten minutes ago, I wouldn't have believed that by now I'd be having an enjoyable conversation with you."

"What changed your mind?"

"The fire hose on that wall is too heavy for my bare hands."

* * *

After Rodrigo finished showing him all the conference halls and gave him a copy of the timetable, Eric retreated to his room to retrieve his student badge for the first scheduled presentation. On his bedside table he found a piece of hotel stationery with Linka's handwriting on it.

_You'll have the ring back. But first: What did we learn today?_

He quickly wrote his reply below and threw it under Linka's door before going back to the elevator.

He had written, _When I'm not focused on fighting my enemy, I have no choice but to get to know him._


End file.
